Booger, you've completely misrepresented what I wrote. I'm done with you and your ignorance. Read Duke's posts for hints about how to argue coherently.

Duke, human civilization did not arise during the Ice Age, or in the Cretaceous. The Earth has been a lot warmer in the past than it is today, and a lot colder too. That is irrelevant to the GW hypothesis and the proposed policies that are an attempt to ameliorate it. What is relevant is today's climate and the factors that may be driving changes to it. If the Earth were getting colder now, I'd be advocating an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Our cities, farms, etc. were built and established with ocean levels near those we have today, and with average temperatures close to those we have today. The climate models appear to confirm that continued rapid increase in CO2 levels is only going to accelerate a sea level rise and overall warming. The warming is not in itself an entirely bad thing, as long as we plan for it, but the sea level change is a slow disaster as it eats away at our infrastructure and land area. No one serious is advocating that we go back to the stone age. All Kyoto aims for is a modest change in habits and technologies that could keep the GW rate significantly lower. This is reasonable and prudent, and is compatible with sensible measures to deal with potential energy shortages too. I don't understand why you are resisting the scientific consensus on this issue. You are knowledgeable and you actually look things up (unlike Booger), so you know the facts about GW. Why cloud the issue with irrelevancies like the climate 70 million years ago? We need to concentrate on the climate 50 or 150 years from now, and all the science points to the GW hypothesis being true.

If we are to use the material submitted by the alarmists as truth (as you would have us do), then we must eventually find the remains of the petroleum industry the dinosaurs used to power their civilization.

That makes no sense. No one I know about claims that greenhouse gas concentrations are the only factor in world climate. They are, however, the factor that is changing most rapidly today, and we know exactly why--we're causing it. The climate models all confirm that it is almost certainly behind the recent rise in global temperatures, with the attendant loss of glacier and sea ice cover that will only reinforce the trend. Today's alarmists are correct, although some seem more than a little frantic, perhaps exasperated by people like you who intentionally misconstrue whatever they say.

When Saddam set fire to the Quwaiti oil fields at the end of the Gulf War, the alarmists began screaming that this alone would cause unprecidented monsoon rains over the Indian sub-continent that would kill millions. As I seem to recall the following monsoon season was slightly dryer than normal.

I don't remember that prediction; do you have a reference? It sounds highly speculative and obviously those people (you don't say who) were incorrect. You seem to be implying that the scientists who endorse the GW hypothesis are the ones who made that prediction, but you are not supporting that in any way. That one or more persons made a wrong prediction once is not evidence that other people's predictions are incorrect.

Do you recall last year's hurricane forecast from the alarmists? Do you recall the hurricanes?

Again, you are using the term "alarmists" (tendentious in itself) to imply that all climate scientists said the same thing. They did not. What the majority have done is simply point out that ocean temperature is positively correlated with hurricane frequency and severity over time.

Quote:
The new Georgia Tech study has now clarified this issue, showing that while hurricane intensity may be substantially influenced by these other factors for an individual storm or storm season, only an increase in sea surface temperatures can account for the long term increase in hurricane strength.

Hoyos and co-workers analysed how four different climatic factors -- sea surface temperatures, humidity in the lower troposphere, vertical wind shear and the changes in "zonal" winds with longitude -- varied between 1970 and 2004, based on satellite data for the North Atlantic, West Pacific, East Pacific, South Pacific, South Indian and North Indian oceans. The team used information theory to analyse the relationship between the variables and the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes observed, and employed time series analysis to distinguish long-term trends from shorter-term variations. The results showed a clear, positive increase in global sea surface temperatures since 1970, and no sign of any global trends in humidity, wind shear or zonal wind change.

"This research supports the hypothesis that the worldwide increase in sea surface temperatures since 1970 is contributing to increase in global hurricane intensity," team member Judith Curry told PhysicsWeb. "The current consensus is that the increase in tropical sea surface temperatures during the last 35 years is attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse warming."

physicsweb.org/articles/news/10/3/13/1

That 2006 was a relatively calm year for hurricanes in the Atlantic is no more proof that this long-term relationship is invalid than it is that 2005's horrific season is proof that it is valid. Over the years, and over the globe (there is more to the world than the Western hemisphere), warmer temperatures produce more and bigger storms. That's just a fact.

Char, in Biblical times false prophets were stoned (with a different meaning ours may be too). I think the least we could do for them today is just ignore them. When they make themselves into large enough pests, perhaps a few rocks would be in order.

Even real prophets were without honor in their own land, I'm told. Ignorant people who did not want to change what they were doing would refuse to believe the facts in front of them. You're just carrying on the tradition.

Now for the record, I don't doubt that we are getting warmer ever so slightly. The sun is a variable star that currently is increasing its output.

I haven't found a reference that supports that statement, and would appreciate it if you could cite one. Solar output varies with sunspot activity in a 22 year cycle, but I haven't seen figures on a long term rise. Thanks. If that's true, though, why wouldn't that rise be on top of the rise due to greenhouse gases, making it even more important to limit them? Can the climate models all be wrong?

We are (in geological terms) just emerging from the last Ice Age. We are about 100-150 years out of the Little Ice Age. We don't even know what constitutes normal for extended climatological periods--the best we can actually do is say climate fluctuates.

We can do better than that, Duke, and climatologists are doing better. They have zeroed in on what appears to be (from the data) the main cause of the recent rise in global temperatures. Over the course of the last few decades, thoughtful people have come up with prudent policy prescriptions that would probably help ameliorate the effects of GW at a modest cost. And yes, a few "sky is falling" types have latched onto the science and are making a good living and a lot of press as Cassandras. That does not mean they are completely wrong, however. In fact, they are mostly right about the long term effects and their cause.

I'm not Al Gore. I respect his road show and movie as a wakeup call that is garnering some attention, but I regret his exaggerations and the implication that there are things we can do that can halt GW. We can't. But we can slow it up a little, save some energy, and make plans for relocating a few hundred million people. Maybe there will be Bangladeshis farming in Siberia in a century. Maybe the Acadians will migrate back to Canada (Evangeline, come home). But there are changes coming, not for the dinosaurs or the Vikings, but for our children and grandchildren, and we are not entirely helpless.

Believe it or not.